On January 21, 1976 a teenage John Tye was among crowds of onlookers clinging to a chain link fence, cheering as the first commercial British Airways Concorde flight departed from London’s Heathrow airport.
Tye was exhilarated, amazed and inspired as he saw this sleek, supersonic airplane of the future climb into the skies and make history.
Little did Tye know some 20 years later, he’d be sitting in the Concorde flight deck for the first time, pinching himself that his teenage dream was coming true.
Tye vividly recalls his first moments flying Concorde. Sure, he’d gone through extensive training, he’d practiced on the simulator — but this was the real deal. It was a feeling he could never have fully prepared for.
Tye and his fellow training pilots were in Seville, Spain. It was a beautiful Thursday evening — “the sun was just setting, you could see a big ball of fire at the end of runway,” as Tye puts it.
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